"The Manchurian Candidate" is a fever dream of a movie, filmed in the hyper-real, kinetic style of nightmares. Bad things happen and happen fast. Faces of friends become faces of enemies. Safe reality morphs without warning into something strange and menacing. As directed by Jonathan Demme, "The Manchurian Candidate" suggests the possibility of pandemonium, even in its quietest moments.

Based on the 1962 Cold War classic, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Frank Sinatra, "The Manchurian Candidate" is updated to accommodate a whole new set of modern-day terrors and fantasies. Denzel Washington plays a man suffering from nightmares, but he's not the only one. The movie depicts a collective 21st century American nightmare, in which political, scientific and corporate power align to destroy the Constitution and the Bill of Rights -- not by challenging them but by subverting them so utterly that no one even notices they're gone.

The film is one of the few Hollywood movies to directly address the fact that we're living in a post-Sept. 11 world. It takes place either in some near- future or alternate present in which America is simultaneously involved in several wars, and terrorist attacks are common occurrences in American cities. An upcoming presidential campaign -- and a political party's need to seem tough on terrorism -- allows for the ascendancy of a young congressman, Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber), a Gulf War veteran with a Medal of Honor to his credit. Engaging and forthright in public, he's strangely distracted in private and under the thumb of his ruthless mother (Meryl Streep), a powerful U.S. senator.

Washington plays Ben Marco, a career soldier who remembers Shaw from the Gulf and recommended him for the Medal of Honor. Ever since, Marco has been plagued by recurring nightmares of being tortured and brainwashed in Kuwait. He dreams that Shaw's heroism never took place, that it was all a lie implanted in his head. The dreams seem real, but Marco tells himself he has Gulf War Syndrome and tries to ignore them.

In a beautiful shot, we see Washington, as Marco, sitting in his crummy apartment, watching Shaw accept the vice presidential nomination. A lesser actor would glower or look mystified. Washington somehow does both. It's a look of concern, skepticism, aggrievement and puzzlement. He doesn't know what to think, but that's not stopping him from thinking.

Meeting up with a veteran from his old unit, who is having identical nightmares, spurs Marco to start asking questions. That's really where the movie begins, and so let's leave the story there. Obviously, Shaw's heroism was a lie. Equally obvious is that powerful forces are behind placing him at the threshold of power.

Demme and screenwriters Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris set "The Manchurian Candidate" within a textured 21st century landscape, in which snatches of conversation, headlines and news snippets, overheard seemingly at random, create the impression of a mad, frenzied world. We hear about a controversy about touch-screen voting machines and later of an election in which the winning candidate has 70 percent of the vote. Coincidence? In the background of one scene, a comedian is on television, making jokes about the conglomerate Manchurian Global. The comedian thinks he's practicing his free speech, but he's as powerless and innocent as the schoolchildren we also see in passing, putting on a play about the Bill of Rights.

In the original version of "The Manchurian Candidate," the fear was communism. In the remake, it's tyranny in the form of Dwight Eisenhower's old fear, the "military-industrial complex." In a deliberately provocative parallel, the movie treats Manchurian Global as a stand-in for Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton. News reports talk about Manchurian being granted no-bid contracts and being accused of price gouging. Furthermore, like President Bush, Shaw is presented as a third-generation political figure, part of an American dynasty.

Yet these parallels don't really add up to anything resembling a cohesive statement, and more than the first "Manchurian Candidate," the remake shakes down as a conventionally plotted thriller. It's the performances that make it exceptional. As a man being driven half-mad, who can seem almost crazy in his drive to prove himself not crazy, Washington is the ideal locus of audience sympathy. As the candidate, Schreiber could be considered a villain, but he makes the character's confusion and horror come through. Even the minor players are made vivid -- not just Jon Voight as a liberal senator, but Vera Farmiga as the senator's daughter.

But no one can talk about the acting in "The Manchurian Candidate" without rhapsodizing about Streep (in the role originated by Angela Lansbury). She has the Hillary hair and the Karen Hughes attack-dog energy, but the charm, the inspiration and the constant invention are her own. She gives us a senator who's a monomaniac, a mad mommy and master politician rolled into one, a woman firing on so many levels that no one can keep up -- someone who loves being evil as much as Streep loves acting. She's a pleasure to watch -- and to marvel at -- every second she's onscreen.

-- Advisory: This movie contains violence and strong language.

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